


Pick the Shards of Glass from My Soul

by Shellepink



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Joshua Faraday has nightmares, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Canon, Rating May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-03-07 23:39:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18883648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shellepink/pseuds/Shellepink
Summary: "Well, I didn't fall from a horse's ass."Technically true.  But sometimes, looking back... Faraday wishes he had.  Might have been better than what actually happened.----Fragments and memories from Faraday's past, leading up to the film.  Character study and exploration.





	1. Chapter 1

When Joshua Faraday was a young boy, he’d enjoyed sneaking into the local Baptist church, listening to the pastor speak.  The man was old and weathered, wrinkles about his eyes and nose, with a gentle smile that put everyone at ease.  He talked about Heaven, about God and love and salvation by faith and faith alone.  About choice and rebirth and acceptance.  It was beautiful-sounding and tempting and nice to believe in.

Faraday’s mother had hated the place.  Not a true Christian church, she’d said, wasn’t connected to the Pope, wasn’t a true House of the Lord.  Had she her way, Faraday would have never gone, but Faraday’s father had defended him, and it wasn't like she cared enough to actually stop him. 

And besides, it was… nicer.  His mother’s church – with its stingy old nuns and angry old priest – talked about deeds and good works and earning your way into Heaven.  And Faraday had never liked doing his chores, and he didn’t like listening to his mother shrieking about mortal sins and sloth and how that was the surest path to Hell that she ever did see.  He didn’t like the way the silence at Mass felt like a solid thing, weighing down his chest, weighing it down to the floor. 

His mother complained about him to the nuns, and they were always trying to get him to clean up his act, and that made it even worse.  He already had to deal with them every day when he was doing his learning, he didn’t want to deal with them on the Lord’s Day of rest as well.  Most days, he could still feel the sting of their rulers at his knuckles.

But the Baptist church people always smiled at him.  The pastor would kneel down and put a hand on Faraday’s head and ask him how he was.  He would talk about how Faraday was beloved, how “God is always here with us, even if we can’t see him.”  He didn’t nag Faraday about doing his chores, about original sin, about how he was tainted and imperfect in the eyes of God. 

For a while there, Faraday had a good thing going.

But then Faraday’s father started to drink, and Faraday stopped going to that church. 

Not long after that, his parents started to yell, and no one was paying any attention to him anymore. 

One nun at his schoolhouse noticed something when he came in one day with a dark bruise on his wrist.  The back of his shirt was ripped and he’d almost worn it backwards so that he could at least cover the tear with his arms. 

When she saw it, the nun gripped his wrist tight and gave a firm nod.

"Good to see your parents taking to giving you proper discipline," she said sternly.  Faraday bit back a wince and forced a smug grin onto his face instead, as though he'd won all along, as though the bruises didn't matter because he'd  _already eaten_ that cookie they no doubt thought he'd stolen by the time his parents got to him.

The nun's eyes narrowed and she dropped Faraday's wrist like it was a snake she'd found in the grass.  Faraday pulled his arm back to his chest and tried to look like it didn't matter, like he didn't have a care in the world. 

He didn't see the other younger nun looking at him until it was too late.

This one wasn't so loud as the others, and didn't look like a weathered old prune.  Sister Mary Catherine was her name.

Faraday'd always thought she looked a bit like his mother, and he liked her much better than the other Sisters.  Sometimes he'd try to make her laugh, and he always sat up a little straighter when he succeeded.

Right then, he wanted her to stop staring and go away.

She crossed over quietly round the back row of boys.  Faraday tensed. 

As she reached him, she knelt down at his tiny table, pushed all the way to the back of the room. 

“What’s this, son?” she asked in a gentle but firm voice, holding his arm up.  The marks left by his father’s fingers were a harsh and angry purple, black just starting to creep in at the edges. 

Faraday smiled, knowing how the right side of his lip pulled up higher than the left, knowing that his mother hated it when he did that, and usually left him alone afterward, and said, “Well, gee, I’s just roughhousing with John up the way.”  He shrugged.  “I guess we got rougher’n we should have.  I’m real sorry Sister Mary Catherine.”  It was the exact same tone he always used when the Sisters got him in trouble for something, and it never failed to get them in a mood over the whole thing. 

But, to Faraday’s surprise, Sister Mary Catherine merely raised an eyebrow and brushed her fingers over the bruise.  Faraday hid a wince.

“These marks are bigger than a boy’s fingers, son,” she said, calm and easy in that way Faraday hated, hated because he couldn’t read it. “How did your shirt get ripped?” 

Faraday opened his mouth, but nothing was there, no words ready at his tongue.

“Well, I—I mean, that…”  Nothing was coming, his mind was blank, and all Faraday could see was his father’s big hand coming toward him, ripping him roughly from his mother’s grip as she screamed for him to get away, leave him alone, don’t you touch my boy.  She’d reached for Faraday, gripped his shirt, tried to pull him back, but he’d just ended up on the ground as his father stepped over him to get at her.

Faraday’s breathing quickened and he clenched his hands tight around the edges of his desk. 

Sister Mary Catherine leaned closer and placed a hand over his.

“Come on, child, let’s go outside for a moment,” she murmured. “Would you like that?  Get a bit of fresh air?”  Faraday managed a shaky nod, and gripped her hand tight as she led him from the room.  He’d never been so grateful for the general largeness of the nuns’ habits before in his life.

Once they were outside, Sister Mary Catherine took a seat on the grass and gestured for him to sit beside her.  Warily, Faraday did. 

“Joshua.”  The Sister’s voice was soft and patient, and it made Faraday tense.  He didn’t answer. 

“Joshua,” she said again, a stern edge to the words. “Do you want to tell me who put those marks on your arm?”  Faraday pinched his mouth shut. 

He shouldn’t do it.  He shouldn’t say anything.  His mama told him not to.  ‘He didn’t mean it,’ she’d said.  Faraday shook his head.

“He didn’t mean it,” he muttered, drawing his knees up so he could hide his face.  Sister Mary Catherine didn’t say anything, but he knew she was looking at him.  The silence stretched, choking and thick, like at Mass.

“Oh, my boy, come here,” the Sister eventually said.  She wasn’t yelling like his mother or his father.  Her voice was low and calm and steady, soothing, and Faraday went to her after only a moment’s hesitation.

He crawled into her lap and turned his face into her shoulder, clenching trembling fingers around her robes.

“’And Jesus said, ‘let the children come unto me.’”  Sister Mary Catherine pressed her hand against the back of Faraday’s head, warm and safe, and took in a deep breath.  “That man will surely go to Hell for this, attackin’ a child.”  Faraday gripped the dark cloth of her habit tighter and pushed his head against her chest.

 _Not before I go back home, he won’t._  

His father didn’t stay long after that.  One day about a week after, Faraday came home from school to find his mother crying in their ratty bed, screaming profanities and pleas and damnations alike in the language she’d left behind long before Faraday’d come along.

Faraday never saw his father again, and in time, he learned to follow his mother’s example and simply pretended that the man never existed.

She grabbed him up and took him out west the very next day, and he never saw those nuns or that schoolhouse again.

It took weeks for the bruises to fade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quote from the summary was lifted from Horne and Faraday's deleted scene, which I love to bits and pieces. 
> 
> I'm operating with the headcanon that Faraday's mother was Irish, and that she immigrated to America before he was born. 
> 
> I'm hoping to continue this, but don't have anything immediately planned, so we'll see what happens. Most of these will be able to stand somewhat on their own, though, so hopefully, long waits won't be too bad? Anyhow, to all who read this, enjoy!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** Graphic descriptions of gore and violence in this chapter.

Faraday saw someone get killed long before he ever killed anyone himself. 

He’d known people could be ugly.  Known it from his father, and sometimes his mother, when she drank enough.  But this was the rawest form of ugliness he’d ever seen, even counting that.

He’d been out Ohio way, at some tavern in the middle of nowhere.  Couldn’t even remember what he’d been doing there.  All he remembered was the sound and look of the man who’d started the whole thing, the angry man who’d snarled and sneered and threatened.  The other guy was taken off-guard by it all.  He’d tried to put up a fight, Faraday remembered, but it’d been too little too late, and the knife had already been out by the time he so much as thought to reach for a gun.

In Faraday’s experience - well, his experience  _now_ ; back then, he hadn't known shit - knife-killings were worse than gun-killings.  Worse to see, worse to hear, worse to feel.  It was easier to get away from a knife-wielding assailant than a gun-wielding one, no doubt about that.  But if it was a choice between the two, Faraday had to say he’d rather go out because of a bullet than a blade.

The attacker, Faraday remembered, had stabbed the knife deep into his target’s gut.  He wouldn’t stop shouting, Faraday knew that, but the sound that stuck out in his mind was the wet croaking gurgle the victim made.  His hands had stuttered and he’d tried to reach for the knife, tried to defend himself, but he was sluggish as hell.  The attacker went in for another stab, then another, and then one more before the sheriff and his deputy finally rushed in and pulled the pair apart. 

Now Faraday had seen his fair share of butchering as a young boy in a small town.  Butcher had even tried to teach him how to skin an animal once.  He knew the sound a knife made when it tore into flesh. 

Somehow, this was almost impossibly different. 

Somehow, the sound of that knife going into that man’s abdomen was more than Faraday could handle.  The sound and sight, with all that blood, with the gurgling, and the red _everywhere_ , and Faraday hadn’t been able to keep from stumbling over to a corner and emptying his stomach. 

And once the attacker had been taken away by the sheriff and his deputy, all the people around him settled back on down at their tables, giving a wide berth to the blood splattered on the floor.  The bartender called one of his boys over, and he set to cleaning up the mess.  Everything went on as if the whole thing had never happened.

That was when he realized just what life was like out here.  That people could kill each other like this, and that it was normal, regular enough to be unremarkable. 

That was when Faraday realized that things were different here than back home.

That victim was his first nightmare. 

Faraday’s first kill came later.  He didn’t know how old he was, but he’d always figured it was about 16 or thereabouts.  He’d sure as hell felt young when it happened. 

As with everyone before, and all who came after, Faraday remembered the asshole’s face with perfect clarity, in both waking and sleeping hours.  He’d had an old face, rough and marked up, and eyes that didn’t see what was right in front of them, always looking at something else, something that wasn’t there.  He’d kept to himself for the most part, but he’d accepted warily when Faraday’d offered to buy him a drink. 

Faraday’d looked young, the man said – he had a name, but Faraday didn’t want to remember it – like a kid he’d known once.  Faraday had smiled brightly and prepared to take immediate advantage of that admission.  In no time at all, there’d been a card game started, wagers being made, and money thrown haphazardly into the pot at the center of the table. 

The man had kept drinking, and Faraday’d gotten sloppy.  He still wasn’t as skilled with his sleight of hand as he would become later, and he was more prone to cocky arrogance in his youthful naïveté.  He’d set up a small pocket knife on the table, covering its presence with laughter and exaggerated hand gestures, and he’d been peeking at the cards in its reflection as he dealt. 

He heard one of the other players at the table scoff and he’d hesitated, and that was when the other man pushed himself angrily to his feet and started yelling about cheating.  The words had slurred together – the guy had been three sheets to the wind when he’d started in – and he brandished his drink angrily, crying about liars and cheaters.

Faraday hadn’t gotten a chance to try and smooth things over before the gun came out. 

Everything blurred together in Faraday’s memory from that point on.  He remembered the sound of smashing bottles and yelling patrons.  He remembered the feel of cool metal against his fingers, and the tight clench of a hand around his arm.  He remembered not seeing the man’s face as he shot at him.  Remembered how easy it was to pull the trigger. 

But mostly, he remembered how the man hadn’t died immediately even after the slug had lodged itself into his gut.

He hadn’t been able to speak in his final moments, the only sound coming out of his mouth wet and wheezing huffs of air.

Faraday had been able to hear the popping of the bloody bubbles in that man’s mouth.

They hadn’t gotten him to the medic in time, and he’d bled out, hollow glassy eyes boring into Faraday’s skull, burning a hole clean through him.

The sheriff and the mayor had been called in, and an old judge who’d luckily been having his dinner when the altercation had taken place.  No need for a trial, he’d said.  It was self-defense, pure and simple.  The now dead man had attacked, and Faraday had defended.

They’d still wanted him out of their town.  Folk didn’t take kindly to cheaters, the sheriff had said, trying to sound soft, but the glint in his eyes had given him away.  Probably’d seen younger boys than Faraday try to hustle grown men out of their cash.

He was gone at first light the next day.  Got a gun the first chance he got.  A piece of shit derringer with two bullets and a sticky trigger.  Got it confiscated by the authorities halfway out of Ohio.  Only his youth and a whole lot of playing dumb had saved him from arrest. 

And the fact that those two bullets were long gone by the time Faraday had to give the gun up.

After that, though, he learned to be more careful about what he took, and from whom.

The nightmares became regular for him from then on.  First it was the average-looking man who went out on a gurgle and a groan, stuck like a pig, and full of holes.  Then came that old man with the grudging half-smile that turned into a drunken sneer full of blood. 

Then came more.

And more. 

And more.

Six pounds of pressure, that’s all it takes.  And the nightmares never go away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have headcanons about Faraday and killing and how he feels about killing, and I love how both the scene with the Babingtons and the scene with Emma imply rather than outright reveal certain things about his character. Those scenes both very much informed how I approached this.


End file.
